The Biggest Loser 7: Couples — Slow and Steady Wins the Race

First things first: Pop Challenge! The players head outside to see two big boards, one full of blue shirts, one full of black shirts. Alison announces that from now on, the game is Blue versus Black. Smiles and cheers from some of the players. The teams are bigger, and solidified now.

Oh, but wait a minute. No one is guaranteed to keep their trainers. The winner of the challenge gets to pick their trainer. The losing team will be split up, between two teams. Everyone else will be decided by the flip of a coin, black on one side, blue on the other.

The challenge? The classic football drill: Up/Downs. Get down on the ground, then get up as fast as possible and touch a suspended disc of your team’s color. 100 times. Each team picks one person to represent them. Oh yeah. And do this in several inches of mud. Good luck!

On your mark, get set, GO! Soon, Blue and Green are fighting for first. Sione really, really wants to stay with Bob. Sione and Tara are neck and neck for first place, with Tara taking the lead at 66. It becomes a mental game for Sione now, and his mind cannot get his body to cooperate. Tara wins by ONE. As for Sione, “second place was last place.”

Mandi is third, then Dane, then Mike. The last two players are Kristin and Helen, pushing to avoid last place. Kristin beats Helen by ONE.

Tara came in first, so she and Laura choose to stay with Jillian on the black team. Since Helen lost, and since she is a team of one, she has to switch trainers and join the black team. The rest is up to fate.

Sione and Filipe flip, come up Blue. Mandi and Aubrey flip, come up Black. Dane is now Blue.

There are three spots left on the Blue team, which should be enough for Ron and Mike, but only one spot left on the Black team. They flip the coin, and it’s Black. This means they have to split up. They decide that Mike will do better with a new trainer than Ron would, so Mike goes to Black and Ron stays blue. No need to flip the coin for Kristin and Cathy, they stay with Bob on Blue.

Interesting coincidence: every player who had to flip the coin ended up switching trainers, except for Ron.

Jillian waits out by the pool for her team, and sees 6 black shirts walking toward her, but with some new faces. “Wow.” The players explain what happened, and Jillian’s first response is “Bob is gonna FREAK out.”

She asks Sione: “Sione, I know you are really connected to Bob, are you all right?” Sione says no offense meant to Jillian, but he’s having a hard time. Jillian says no, no, of course not, she understands. We’ll just have to make sure we have open communication about what works for you, what doesn’t, etc.

Bob walks into the house and sees all the blue shirts. “I KNEW IT!!” Then he sees the faces in the shirts. “Whooooaa.” He’s silent for a moment, then he asks how Mandi is feeling. She’s scared. Kristin starts to cry. She misses her “brothers” and feels like this is unfair. Bob thinks we need to go work out.

The Blue team approaches the gym, and sees the black team, finished, standing outside. Filipe and Sione hug Bob, and Helen is crying. Bob: “Can I take her for a minute?”

~sniff~

Helen lost Shanon, and now Bob in the same day. Bob doesn’t even know what to say. Filipe, Sione, and Mike walk up to join the group. Bob is in tears now, and soon there’s not a dry eye in the group. “This is really difficult, seeing you standing there in those black shirts. I have to walk in there and be a trainer, and I don’t want to train without you guys.”

~Sniff Sniff~ ~wipes away tears~

Sione would rather go home. Bob says “you can’t go home, you have to work hard.” Filipe can barely choke out “How? You tell me.” Bob: “I don’t know. I don’t know, I’m having a real tough time.” Sione now has the hood of his sweatshirt covering his entire face.

~SOB~

Just in case NBC doesn’t think I’ve used enough Kleenex, the editors but to flashbacks of Bob with each of those four players, at different points in their training, making milestones and achieving victory.

~WAIL~ Are they TRYING to kill me?

Bob steals a moment with Kristin, and say that he has never been this much of a mess on this show before. This is THE hardest thing that he has ever been through with the show.

Mandi feels like it’s Day One all over again. New personalities, new workout plans — what if it gets too hard and she can’t handle it? Aubrey knows that Bob doesn’t know where they are physically, so they figure he’s just going to push them until each one of them breaks.

Product Placement Time! Jillian heads into the kitchen to give her new team a nutrition lesson. Losing weight requires eating fresh foods, which can spoil quickly. There are Ziploc brand bags all over the house, with the new fresh shield — locks out air, locks in freshness, and saves money.

Straight to the Challenge now. This one is a Team Challenge. Two bikes sit facing one another. The goal is to put as much mileage on your team’s bike as possible . . . in the next 24 hours. This means the players have to work in shifts, catching catnaps in between, all night long. The winning team gets a 3-pound advantage at the weigh-in, and each winning team member gets a custom Trek bike.

The first players to start out are Mandi for Blue and Mike for Black. Mandi realizes that the bike does not ride like a spinning bike (these are actual Trek bikes mounted to be stationary). Five minutes in, Mike is drenched in sweat. A big difference with these bikes? No foot straps.

Tara is the thinker here. She wonders what everyone will need for an overnight challenge. She raids the kitchen for food, gets pillows and blankets, and hauls it back to the gym. That’s my kind of girl.

The Black team has a strategy: each player goes for 30 minutes, then rests for 2 1/2 hours. Blue players would go as long as they could, doing sprints and then resting.

By Hour 15, Mandi, Ron, and Cathy are in the kitchen getting a bite to eat. They realize there is no way they can win, so they start to strategize. They gather both teams next to the current bikers with a proposal. Since they were all tired, they were all hurting, and they need rest in order to put in a good workout before the weigh-in, she proposes a truce: they stop now. The Black team is going to win anyway, so stop with 9 hours left and let themselves get some rest before the next workout.

The group is silent, and a few heads nod in agreement. Then Sione speaks: he made a promise to himself when he came to the ranch that he wouldn’t quit, and “this feels like quitting. I have three more half-hours in me, and I want to finish this.”

More silence, and then Aubrey says “I’m with ya.” The dynamics of the group change. All of a sudden, people are perked up and re-energized. Tara says Sione’s words gave everyone else encouragement to keep going. Even Mandi is “so thankful” that Sione spoke up.

Sione explains it this way: “We get to the point with these trainers where we’re done, and then they say ‘one more.’ This was that instance where I needed to do one more.”

The teams go the full 24 hours, with Helen and Dane finishing the last few minutes. The results? The Blue team went 264 miles in 24 hours. Black went 301.9 miles. Looks like the 30-minute pacing of team members worked, and slow and steady wins the day. Tara rode the most of anyone, at 58.8 miles. (Srsly, WHERE does she get that self-motivation?)

Due to the President’s speech on February 24, this episode was split in to two parts on two consecutive nights. Part II of this episode begins with a Pop Quiz from Prevention magazine, testing knowledge about health and aging. The winning team will win a Fountain of Youth vacation package for two, including airfare and a 3-night stay at a spa in St. Augustine, Florida.

Question #1: True or False — switching from regular cola to diet cola will help you live longer. Both teams pick False, which is correct. Consuming diet soda can more than double your risk of metabolic syndrome.

#2: Which change in diet will help you live longer — a) cutting fat, or b) cutting calories? Blue says A, Black says B. B is correct. Cutting calories leads to a longer life, and makes your body work more efficiently. You should never restrict fat too much. It helps keep our immune systems running and protects the brain. Just make sure you keep it to mono- and polyunsaturated fats, and limit saturated and trans fats.

#3: Which exercise will help you live longer — a) doing pushups, or b) doing squats? Blue picks A, Black picks B. The correct answer is B. Building proper leg strength, flexibility and stability prevents falling later in life.

Product Placement Time II: For more healthy tips on aging, check out the March issue of Prevention magazine.

Bob comes in the kitchen after Mandi has cooked some chicken and rice for some of her teammates. He remarks that their plates are not very colorful. They need to have vegetables. Product Placement Time III: Green Giant Valley Fresh steamers. Microwave for 5 minutes, 45 calories per serving. Frozen vegetables have all the key nutrients of the fresh, and you don’t have to cut anything up. Kids will love helping you cook.

Mandi was stressed out and worried about her first team weigh-in, and the last-chance workout with Bob. She realizes now that she likes working out with Bob, even though he is totally different from Jillian.

Helen will always have Bob in her heart, but she is also settling in with Jillian as new trainer.

Dane comments that a lot of the things Bob had him do are things he couldn’t have done 3 weeks ago.

My head starts spinning watching the editors’ cuts from player to player to player, jumping, boxing, pushing, running, lifting, grunting. I am DIZZY.

Weigh-In time. This weigh-in will be for team with highest percentage of weight loss, and then the player with the highest percentage on the losing team will have immunity. Let’s see how they did:

PLAYER

TEAM

START

WEIGHT

LAST

WEIGHT

FORMER

TRAINER

NEW

TRAINER

WEEK’S

LOSS

NEW

WEIGHT

NET

LOSS

Filipe

BLACK

364

291

Bob

Jillian

-8

283

-81

Sione

BLACK

372

296

Bob

Jillian

-10

286

-86

Dane

BLACK

412

325

Jillian

Bob

-13

312

-100

Helen

BLACK

257

205

Bob

Jillian

-7

198

-59

Kristin

BLUE

360

289

Bob

Bob

-10

279

-81

Cathy

BLUE

293

263

Bob

Bob

-14

249

-44

Tara

BLACK

294

222

Jillian

Jillian

-11

211

-83

Laura

BLACK

285

241

Jillian

Jillian

-8

233

-52

Ron

BLUE

430

354

Bob

Bob

-5

349

-81

Mike

BLACK

388

307

Bob

Jillian

-10

297

-91

Mandi

BLUE

263

210

Jillian

Bob

-7

203

-53

Aubrey

BLUE

249

216

Jillian

Bob

-5

211

-38

*Player with highest percentage of weight loss.

TEAM

PERCENTAGE

LOSS

BLACK

3.65%

BLUE

3.26%

+Black won the weigh-in even without the 3-pound advantage from winning the challenge.

The Blue team discusses elimination options. Who needs to be here? Ron: “We all need to be here. Who’s got support at home? I hate to say it, but Dane’s got the support at home, he’s lost 100 pounds.” Dane says “we all got freakin’ fat and we all need to be here. If you don’t want to use my weight loss for a Blue team advantage, that’s your decision. I know that I’m a big threat to Mike, and I think that’s what’s driving your decision.”

Mandi is crying. “I can’t vote for Dane.” Aubrey can’t make a decision. She just can’t. Ron is not ready to leave the ranch, and has proven for 40 years that he can’t do it by himself. Dane, on camera, crying. “It’s hard to know that you put as much hard work into something and then it could all be taken away. Damn me for being successful.”

How’s he doing now? Well, when he left for the ranch, his wife started training for a marathon. When he left the ranch, he realized he could do it as well. Dane ran an entire marathon side by side with his wife. Not only that, he did his first marathon in a sub-4: 3 hours and 53 minutes. No weight was given, but I’ll be interested to see him at the finale.

Next episode: Jillian crosses a line. I’m furiously catching up on recaps, so stay tuned. I can’t WAIT.